Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Hotheads | 401safe. What is selfish is not the real motives of the person but themetaphorical motives of the genes that built the person. Genes "try" tospread themselves by wiring animals' brains so the animals love their kinand try to keep warm, fed, and safe.The confusion comes from thinking of people's genes as their trueself, and the motives of their genes as their deepest, truest, unconsciousmotives. From there it's easy to draw the cynical and incorrect moral thatall love is hypocritical. That confuses the real motives of the person withthe metaphorical motives of the genes. Genes are not puppetmasters;they acted as the recipe for making the brain and body and then they gotout of the way. They live in a parallel universe, scattered among bodies,with their own agendas.Most discussions of the biology of altruism are really not about the biologyof altruism. It's easy to see why nature documentaries, with theirlaudable conservationist ethic, disseminate the agitprop that animals actin the interests of the group. One subtext is, Don't hate the wolf that justate Bambi; he's acting for the greater good. The other is, Protecting theenvironment is nature's way; we humans had better shape up. Theopposing theory of the selfish gene has been bitterly attacked out of thefear that it vindicates the philosophy of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street:greed is good, greed works. Then there are those who believe in selfishgenes but urge us to face up to the sad truth: at heart, Mother Teresa isreally selfish.I think moralistic science is bad for morals and bad for science. Surelypaving Yosemite is unwise, Gordon Gekko is bad, and Mother Teresa isgood regardless of what came out in the latest biology journals. But I supposeit is only human to feel a frisson when learning about what made uswhat we are. So I offer a more hopeful way of reflecting on the selfish gene.The body is the ultimate barrier to empathy. Your toothache simplydoes not hurt me the way it hurts you. But genes are not imprisoned inbodies; the same gene lives in the bodies of many family members atonce. The dispersed copies of a gene call to one another by endowingbodies with emotions. Love, compassion, and empathy are invisiblefibers that connect genes in different bodies. They are the closest we willever come to feeling someone else's toothache. When a parent wishes